Barichara
Barichara is the perfect place to come when you want a little down time. There is the odd direct bus from Bucaramanga, otherwise you have to change in San Gil, either at the main terminal or the Terminalito, from where buses to local destinations leave.
I think this is the only time I’ve felt ripped off in my two months in Colombia - the man in the ticket office charged me for two people instead of one, even though I was very clearly on my own. I only realised when we arrived in Barichara and I noticed the price on the door of the bus. Ugh. It’s not a lot of money - £2 instead of £1. But it’s the principle!
There’s not an awful lot to do in Barichara, but that’s the beauty of it. You can wander round it’s whitewashed streets, go for a coffee or take in the views at the miradors. And the rest of the time, you can simply sit on the balcony of Hostel Tinto and take in the view and the breeze - it gets pretty hot here during the day. And make sure you slap on a lot of insect repellent, as the mosquitoes here are savage!
I whiled away my first day here on the balcony in the hostel, making plans and reading. On my second day I broke this monotony with a 5 minute walk up the road to Relaja-T, the only spa from here to Bogota, it seems. I'd been dying for a massage for ages (after nearly 5 months in dorm beds, haven't I earned it?!) and luckily this place did the job with a super relaxing all over massage from Pilar, a fully certified physiotherapist.
Pilar warned me that if I was going to do the famous Camino Real walk from Barichara to Guane, I should get up and leave at 7am. Whilst I'm usually one to heed advice, I'm less of one for getting up early, so after crawling out of bed at my usual time and faffing around for an hour, I finally set off on my way to Guane at 10:10am.
Pilar was of course completely right, and I should have left at 8am at the latest. Before I even reached the start of the old path I was sweating from the sun beating down on me. Oh well.
The Camino Real is an old pathway, made and used by local people for hundreds of years before a road ever existed between the two pueblos. So the trail is very clear, if somewhat roughly strewn with the big red rocks that were originally used to build it. For this reason, a lot of the time you're looking down, watching where you step, so that you don't twist an ankle, but when you do look up the views are fab, if not the mountains of the surrounding valley, then the pretty pathway leading you through this Santander countryside.
It took me 90 minutes to reach Guane from the start of the trail, and I didn’t meet anyone along the way, except one man following his cow back the other way, who advised me I was just 5 minutes from Guane. I kind of liked it this way, just being on my own, going at my own pace, and having the sights and sounds of this historical route all to myself.
There are a few houses along the way, including this one by the mirador. I was tempted to pop in for a cold gaseosa, but in the end I hot-footed it (literally, it was so hot) to Guane where I was rewarded with a turkey lunch for my efforts.
If I thought Barichara was small, Guane is something else! Just a small pretty square with a church, some artesanias and a few grocery shops. After lunch I went to check out the small archaeological museum but as luck should have it, it was closed for the lunchtime period, and there really wasn't much to keep me busy for another hour, so when the bus came I was back on my way to Barichara, this time heading Pilar's advice to not walk back.
This was actually a relatively busy day, because after a refreshing shower I went to the Fundacion San Lorenzo, Taller de Papel. Here at the foundation they make paper from fique plants, which are part of the same family as our old friend agave. As well as making the paper onsite, they run workshops for locals and sell the products made in the shop onsite. For 3,000COP you can take a 10-15 minute mini-tour where one of the ladies shows you the whole process.
And it wouldn’t be right if you didn’t…
